With Class 4A football as deep as it has been in years, no team wants to leave making the playoffs to chance.

There’s only one guaranteed way to make the playoffs, and that’s by winning your conference. The Windsor High School football team took its first step toward that with a resounding 48-7 win at home over Thompson Valley on Friday night.

“There’s seven doors to get to where we want to be in November,” coach Chris Jones said. “Turn the key, go in and take on who’s in the room. We took on who was in the room and it’s a very important first step at home.”

Windsor didn’t just go through the first door, the Wizards kicked it down. The Wizards (3-1, 1-0 Northern Conference) jumped out to a 27-0 lead at halftime, despite having two drives stall inside Thompson Valley’s 20-yard line.

The rout continued in the second half, with Windsor going up 41-0 in the third quarter to invoke the running clock mercy rule. At that time, Windsor had started every drive in Thompson Valley territory due to a combination of good special team returns and turnovers.

“It really worked in our favor. We had some short fields to work on and we threw some formations out there that they had not seen before,” Jones said. “We were able to do a good job and convert some of those.”

Alex Weis and Andy Ackerson had interceptions and Drew Bunday had a few big returns, including a 69-yarder to open the second half that set up another Windsor touchdown.

Windsor had seven touchdown runs by six different players. While the offense was its usual dominant self — the Wizards averaged 7.2 yards per rush — it was once again the defense that worked wonders.

Thompson Valley had only 37 yards of total offense in the first half and finished with a paltry 76 yards of offense for the game. The Eagles didn’t score until the waning seconds when their first-team offense scored against a unit full of Windsor’s sub-varsity players to prevent the Wizards’ second consecutive shutout.

Windsor has now allowed 21 total points in its past three games.

“Everyone has a common goal on the defensive unit. We want to drive them back, keep going and never stop,” defensive end Zach Peck said. “We just build off momentum and don’t take anything for granted. We kept putting our foot on the pedal and kept going.”

Now Windsor readies for Friday’s homecoming game against 2-1 Longmont. There’s no doubt the Wizards put the conference on notice with Friday’s win.

“We definitely made a statement for everyone,” Peck said.

Follow sports reporter Kevin Lytle at twitter.com/Kevin_Lytle and at facebook.com/KevinSLytle.